My Brothers, Paul and John.

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Proverbs 17:17

My parents had always planned to have four children. Then they had me and my sister. “Two,” said my exhausted mother to my father, “is quite enough. Let’s stop at two.”

So they stopped.

Then Grandma was at the clothes line and Grandma got a message. Grandma often got messages at the clothes line.

“I say,” she said to my mum. “You and Ian are going to have two more children.”

“I don’t think so,” said Mum darkly. “The two we’ve got are quite enough, thanks.”

“But I heard from God at the clothes line!” said Grandma excitedly. “He said, ‘I’m going to give Ian and Wendy two sons for faithfulness!”

“Well, we’re not planning on having any more,” said Mum.

“If I got this wrong,” retorted Grandma, “then I shall have to seriously rethink how I hear the voice of the Lord.”

Then quite suddenly, unexpectedly, Mum was pregnant.

“It’s a boy,” said Grandma serenely, when she heard.

“We don’t know that yet,” objected Mum.

“It’s the first of your two boys for faithfulness to God,” said Grandma. “It’s a boy, alright.”

And it was. They named him Paul.

And a few years later, it was another boy. And they named him John.

I read somewhere that brothers are the present that God gives you and then he laughs. It’s probably true. A few years ago I was thinking about this story and a thought occurred to me. In retrospect, I really think I ought to have taken my query to my sensitive sister, but instead I hunted out my two ‘gifted from God’ brothers. I found them, hidden behind stacks and stacks of text books on engineering and computer science, swotting for their respective university exams. “You know how you were given to Mum and Dad for faithfulness?” I said, as I plonked myself down.

“Yes?”

“Well, what’d you think he gave Rachel and me to Mum and Dad for?”

The elder brother emerged from his huge and horrible text book. He had a gleam in his eye and a smirk on his mouth. “Punishment,” he said, succinctly. Then he returned to his study.

I stuck my tongue out at him and retreated. His reply did not alarm me one whit.

A brother is still a brother, even if his arrival was heralded by the voice of God at Grandma’s clothesline.